The Sydney apartment building found to have serious defects

The Sydney builder behind a house that collapsed last year is facing mounting problems after Building Commission NSW ordered his company’s administrators to urgently fix structural problems in an apartment block.

George Khouzame – who with his wife Chaza Khouzame is at the centre of an Environmental Protection Authority investigation into a Southern Highlands property that the agency alleges was used to store more than 10 tonnes of asbestos-contaminated materials – was the sole director of He Co Pty Ltd when it built 2-4 Anzac Avenue, Engadine, south of Sydney.

Building Commission NSW has issued He Co Pty Ltd, run by George Khouzame (pictured), with a work rectification order over an Engadine property the company built.Credit: Domain

That company, which is now in voluntary administration, was this week issued with a rectification order by the state’s building authority, which found serious defects in the apartment’s load-bearing columns and multiple issues with the apartment block’s waterproofing, drainage and fire safety systems.

There is no imminent safety risk to residents of the building.

Elizabeth Stewart, acting director of building compliance at Building Commission NSW, said the columns in the development, consisting of three buildings of three storeys each, were not installed in line with approved designs.

“In situ concrete columns replaced with the Permanent Plastic Formwork column, which is deviation from the approved structural design plan, has led to the structural integrity of the concrete walls [and] columns being compromised and likely to cause the inability of the wall/columns to withstand the exerted loads,” she wrote in the order, published online on Thursday.

The collapsed Norman Street residential property in Condell Park. Credit: Kate Geraghty

Other weather-proofing and fire safety systems were not installed correctly, she said, and a system to rid the block’s garbage room of exhaust air was incomplete, causing “a hazard that could affect the health and amenity for people in the building”.

Stewart gave the company four months to fix all the issues – but George Khouzame will not be able to touch the project, having been stripped of his building licence in the weeks after the Condell Park home he built collapsed.

That task will fall to the company’s administrator, Michael Hogan of insolvency firm HoganSprowles. Hogan did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday, nor did lawyers for Khouzame.

The new order is the latest in a string of problems for the builder. Khouzame was a wanted man for months before handing himself in to NSW Police in March this year, later pleading guilty to nine offences relating to using an unlicensed contractor and the fraudulent lodging of insurance applications on three different worksites.

In May he told the Herald the charges were “very, very, very, very low-end fraud. It was literally an honest mistake from my staff in the office.”

That same month his wife was fined $135,000 after she illegally cleared five hectares of native vegetation. The Herald later revealed the EPA was investigating more than 10 tonnes of asbestos-riddled construction waste found on the site.

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